AirDP – Lele Danzi

Although involved in eyewear since 1996, he says he’s never created a more beautiful collection than the one he’s presenting at Mido. The creative director is referring to a collection of strong contrasts

words Elisa Zanetti

In its name, AirDP contains the word ‘air’, combined with the initials of Del Piero’s surname, a great sports champion and co-founder of the brand with Paola Froldi. Why did they choose it?

The name combines the idea of lightness with the initials of one of the founding members, a great sports champion, and thus summarises two fundamental concepts for us: the desire to create a product that’s light and, at the same time, versatile and functional. The key words to describe us are dynamism, emotion, mental agility and design. We translate thoughts and sensations into designer objects that are smart, colourful and innovative, that have a very strong identity, and are light, both practically and conceptually.

Up to now, ultem has been the material that’s characterised your collections. Why?

Because it’s a simple, light, clean material, which at the same time lends itself to being an object you can be creative with: it can be coloured according to your preferences, is ultra-lightweight, highly elastic and extremely robust. Finally, it is absolutely accessible, which is what we like best of all.

In the Texture collection, you have created a three-dimensional effect. How was the collection created?

We had a designer vase at the company that we liked a lot, we thought it might be nice to reconstruct the texture onto glasses and so, from the aesthetic designs, we moved on to the first prototype, which we liked, and it made the idea seem good, so much so that we produced an entire collection.

The novelty for this Mido is however Combined, a collection that sees the introduction of a new material…

Yes, medical stainless steel. It’s been a great challenge for us: we’ve combined two different materials with two completely different types of processing. We combined materials together in shapes, in design, in colour… it hasn’t been easy, but it’s a collection that has a lot of character. There are twelve models in five colours, so sixty references in total, with very strong colours that are in harmony with each other. It’s a strong and highly innovative collection. I’ve never seen anything like this in my twenty-two year career.

We’ve never seen an encounter between sight and smell before: recently you also launched a line of AirDP perfumes for opticians’ shops and for people. How did you get this idea?

The idea came about because our customers asked us whether it was possible to have some of the fragrances we had made in store so they could try them out. We received so many requests that we thought they were two worlds that might get along well with each other. We don’t distribute in perfumeries, so we decided to make a kit and offer people who choose our eyewear the chance to have our perfume as well; as we had created environment fragrances for our retailers.

Glasses, perfumes, but not just that: AirDP has its own clothing as well…

Yes, we’ve just launched a line of underwear and will soon present a line of denim clothing with a major designer, but for now, I can’t reveal any more. I’m having a lot of fun because I don’t just deal with glasses anymore, but with an entire project, with all its facets and a strong brand identity.